Amberleigh Halt - a little more progress

Well originally I hoped to get the little Amberleigh Halt finished by xmas, but this has now gone overtime. Modelling has been limited over the last week, with xmas, seeing friends and family and of course, copious amounts of alcohol.

Anyway, tonight my son and I made a little more progress on Amberleigh. We badly assembled a backscene. This is my first time of putting a back scene up and it is creased all over the shop. A good learning experience, but not a perfect finish. We finished the concrete fence, painted the posts and added the grounded wagon body. Tomorrow we hope to finish adding the trees and hedges and finish the landscaping. This just leaves a sign or two to add by the station and hey presto, a finished micro layout!!



I aim to have this running as a full test bed/photo area by the end of January, with many other projects on the go at the moment. I know that I am going to have to buy some more trees to cover the dodgy backscene, but that's life.

We are heading to the train shop tomorrow, to get some more hedging and just maybe, I might buy a hornby class 50 in the January sales.....

Merry christmas

Just a quick post to wish one and all a merry christmas and happy new year.

I hope to get up a post or two next week on my current projects.

weathering wagons and a class 20

Well as promised here are a selection of shots of the first wagons and locomotive off the weathering production line using my new air brush. In short, I am really happy with them. They have been a good learning exercise, not least in using thinners and varnish, but overall I a pleased. The fertiliser wagon was the very first thing I sprayed and although the weathering might be considered by some to be a little heavy, I like it. Not least because it is my first attempt at airbrush weathering.


The van fit I purchased on friday morning at the the Exeter model railway shop. It is great that by sunday it has been converted and weathered. Using acyclic paints really helps speeds up the process. Also, I much prefer using acrylic varnish as compared to enamel varnish. It seems much easier to mix and spray.


Lastly, my class 20 has had a light weathering. This was the third weekend project and by this point I had gained a little confidence with the airbrush. There are a couple of heavy touches on this, but by and large I think it resembles a work stained locomotive. Using hand brushes would have meant painting the whole locomotive, whilst using and airbrush you can direct your weathering with much greater accuracy and effect.


Anyway, those are my experiences, I hope that you enjoy looking at these wagons and loco as much as I have enjoyed making it. I have nearly finished my grampus wagon today and am about to get a sealion and a class 33/1 onto the workbench. Will put posts up of these as they progress. Also the 50ft parcels wagon is nearing completion, so hopefully some posts of these projects next week.

Cambrian walrus and a new air brush

My first attempt at an airbrushed finish. Not perfect, but a big step forwards!

Following on from my last post, things have been busy, getting ready for xmas and with work. However, the biggest reason I have not put up a new post for little over a week is due to my new airbrush arriving. My only comment to anyone thinking of getting an airbrush is to do it - you will never look back!

I opted for an IWATA CR revolution brush, following from the airbrush test in Model Rail. I couldn't be happier with it, and the quality of finish of my models has improved no end. I am still finding my feet with it a little, trying to get rid of occasional spluttering, but I am already close to finishing several projects for my Amberleigh layout using it. I have a vanfit, the class 20, the 50ft parcels van, a lamprey, fertiliser wagon and the second walrus in the paint shop at the moment. I am using the lifecolour acrylics to weather them and they are a joy to use. The roof dirt shade in particular is great for weathering, generally spraying over some fame dirt.

Anyway, the second cambrian walrus is being painted with the air brush at the moment. After the paint finish on the first wagon, the quality of the finish in this second wagon is much higher. I am definitely thinking of building a third walrus, but have two whales, a LMS CCT, and a SR PMV and SR CCT to build, so it will probably slip down the list.

Building the walrus there are some pointers that I hope will be of use to anyone building one of these wagons. I replaced the buffers with some brass A1 buffers, using the shawplan buffer plates. These are a great improvement over the Cambrian plastic ones, but require some cutting of the ends. When mounting the bogies, they need to be set as close to the middle of the wagon as possible, so they do not foul the end detail. Lastly, I found it easiest to construct the main elements of the body first, then install the ends and floorplates. Once the body is set square the wagon simply falls together and is a joy to build.


Tomorrow I will finish my fertiliser wagon and put up some posts of this. This is my first attempt at weathering with an airbush. Whilst not perfect, I am pleased with the overall result, not least because it is my first steps into a better world of modelling.

Cambrian walrus wagon

Well finally i got the first walrus wagon finished. This is a blog about my experiences of modelling and hence not only perfect projects will be put up!! This description fits this wagon perfectly, as it has been a fun project, but ultimately I am not entirely satisfied with the output.



The wagon is finished in a heavily weathered state, a combination of framedirt washes, weathering powders and real ballast dust!! I think it looks ok, and the dim light it is photographed in does not help do it justice. However, although this is a great kit to build, the quality of the hand wheels is poor and lets the whole model down a little. For such prominent features they really compromise the look of the wagon. I plan to replace these in due course.



The other issue is the paint finish. It is too thick in places and bad mixing on the final coat, led to staining along the bottom edge of some of the body. The whole wagon is hand painted and this is the straw that broke the camels back! I have finally bitten the bullet and ordered an airbrush today. I just want to be able to produce a higher quality finish on these models I spend months building!! I will put up a further post of the build later this week or early next week. Anyway, I have the second of these on my desk currently and a couple of whales left to build. These will form a series of ballast trains running out of meldon quarry on my layout, coupled with some turbots, sealions and seacows.

Amberleigh Halt

Well a full weekend of modelling was planned, but coming down with the flu on wednesday has meant that very little modelling has taken place again!!! I managed to finish the ballasting on the Amberleigh scenic board. I dragged the station into the sunlight into the lounge and took a few photographs of it.

Whilst being ill I have been mulling a few issues around in my head, regards modelling and layouts. Decisions made are that I am going to buy a new airbrush, compressor and spray booth, although heaven knows how I am going to pay for it. I have got to the point where I am no longer satisfied with hand brush painted models and although I will be a novice with an airbrush, I am sure the finishes will be far superior. The other thing I am considering is making the baseboards for Amberleigh halt and Watergate Halt inter-connectable, to form one larger layout. I am not quite sure how I am going to manage this at the moment and Amberleigh must work on its own, but it has given the project an extra dimension.

Riverside freight and wagons, wagons, wagons

I have been doing a little bit of web research recently regards the Riverside freight. This freight ran from Exeter to Barnstaple, only stopping in 1987. It was only 1 of 2 scheduled mixed freights on British Rail and according to one website consisted of an SK, BCK, 3 or 4 ex GWR Fruit D vans, 1 or 2 BGs and about 5 empty vans. Barnstaple is curious in this respect, as still had a relatively high freight volume even in the 1980s, with wood carried in OTAs from Lapford, cement and resin carried in PCA tankers, fertiliser wagons, and also china clay from the Torrington line until 1982. In addition the early morning passenger train was locomotive hauled (normally class 33 or 31) and had c. 4 or 5 mk1s and a newspaper/parcel van.

All of this makes for some great modelling potential, as many of these trains were short, say only 3 or 4 OTAs and 3 or 4 PCAs. I have been building up a fleet of Cambrian OTAs over the years, but with the release of this wagon type from both Bachmann and Hornby I am going to purchase the rest. Yesterday I brought a Hornby fertiliser wagon, which has some awful mouldings/couplings on. This is going to form the basis of a super detailing job. I also purchased a Bachmann 50ft parcel wagon which is going to be heavily weathered, just like the prototypical stock on the Tarka line in the 1980's, which was extremely dirty. I need to purchase 2 or 3 GW Fruit D vans from Parkside Dundas and then the modelling of this freight will be possible on my little layout.

In addition to these projects detailing of my class 20 is coming on really well, although adding the couplings to this loco was a complete nightmare. The first walrus is almost finished, the second walrus and lamprey are in the paintshop and scenery of Amberleigh is continuing full speed ahead. I intend to build my kit of the Cambrian whale wagon on Sunday morning and start the detailing of the fertiliser wagon and parcels van. I will hopefully finish my walrus wagon this weekend and will put up some pictures of it and progress on the class 20.